Study skills are learning strategies that help students organize, process, and use information effectively. Because youth might need help not just with what they learn but also with how they learn it, WIA makes study skills instruction, together with tutoring and dropout prevention, one of the 10 required elements of youth programs.

These skills are important not just for

a. academic learning,
b. but also for everyday life. They can help individuals be organized and successful lifelong learners and manage their jobs, households, and finances (EMSTAC, 2001).
c. Study skills can be especially critical for youth with learning disabilities, who may have difficulty staying focused and become discouraged by lack of success (Beckman, 2002). When students attribute failure to internal factors, such as lack of ability, or external factors, such as bad luck, their self-confidence suffers and they see effort as futile (Peirce, 2004). Mastering the skills for studying and learning increases their self-efficacy and empowers them to change their approach and try different strategies if one fails.
Signs that students need help developing study skills include spending too much time studying, taking class notes that are difficult to understand or contain the wrong information, procrastinating about large projects or tasks, being unable to identify what is important in a text, or being unable to remember what they have read (Cook Counseling Center, 2006; EMSTAC,2001). Students and teachers can use the checklist provided by EMSTAC to identify where students need the most help and how teachers can prepare them to